Hello folks.

It must have been cliche day in Ghent on Sunday. I ended up sharing a room with a large, blonge Norwegian called Magnus, a hairy Spaniard called Carlos and a German biker called Hans. And then there was me, a bookish, polite Englishman; had I been forewarned, I would have changed my name to Henry or Dicky, just to avoid spoiling the picture.

Since we last spoke, I have left Ghent and moved on to Bruges. First, let me say that I love Ghent. It is possibly the most beautiful city I have ever seen. It’s a university town, probably not much bigger than Norwich, and almost completely overlooked by tourists. It is also absurdly well-stocked with architecture; the square-mile city centre has no less than six cathedral-scale buildings, any one of which a city like, say, Leeds (I don’t know why I picked on Leeds) would be proud to lay claim to. It is delightfully modern, for an old city – it has all the amenieties necessary for a University town (decent public transport, a decent shopping strip, suchlike) which avoiding betraying its medieval roots. Furthermore, it’s intergrated – the ancient, beautiful Dutch architecture is clearly and proudly on show, and while the cobbled streets have been smoothed to allow easy traversing while not having been outright removed. The residents, frankly unused to tourists, were universally wonderful, and – joy of joys! – there wasn’t a Starbucks. What there was, though, was a number of cheap and excellent restaurants – one of the main worries on the trip so far has been eating properly, which is very hard to do in any city on a budget, but not in Ghent, where even the supermarkets are reasonable. In short, I left a small part of my heart in Ghent, and could quite happily live there.

I stayed in Ghent a few days, trying to put off leaving; I found myself unable to get bored of the place. But yesterday I decided that the time was right to move on to Bruge. I was a little apprehensive of Bruge, simply because it’s the tourist capital of Belgium, and it turns out I was right to be; it’s a hideous city, truth be told – every other building is a chocolate shop, the pubs serve 300 types of beer and pedestrians are menaced by horse-and-traps carrying obese Germans. In the 13th Century it was a large port, a trading capital of the Low Countries, but when its serving river dried up it was more or less abandonned; thus fossilised, it survived as a relic of a working medieval city. Which would have been fine, but it was also largely destroyed in the various wars that Belgium endured at the start of the 20th Century, and was rebuilt ‘in the style’ of how it must once have looked; as a result, the city feels fake, like the Hollywood version of how a medieval Belgian city should look, and the Belgians seem to agree, as virtually every soul within the city walls is a tourist – and by God are there a lot of them, mainly Australians and Americans, and it’s a shame, as the ingredients are there for a beautiful town – it’s built on a series of circling canals, and has some lovely suriving townhouses – but alas, market forces seem to have claimed to place. Sometimes the raized should not be raised. Yes, I know, I also crack myself up.

So today I escaped Bruge and headed to Antwerp. Antwerp is a grower. It is a city with a very bad attitude; it is the fashion capital of the Low Countries, famous for its design school and the series of wold-famous fashionistas is has produced, and the culture of snobbery has permeated the populace, making it feel very Parisian. Of course, the way of dealing with this is the same as it is with Paris; you can’t join them, so beat them. It has the oldest cathedral in the Low Countries, home to four Rubens’ and some nice stained glass, but don’t let the locals clock you there – they’re unfailingly rude to tourists, even the barmen and waiters. Instead, the best place to head towards is MoMu, possibly the coolest museum in Europe – so cool, in fact, that it changes its permanent exhibits once every six months, let alone its exhibitions. In other words, enjoy Antwerp, but only if you’re either Belgian or beautiful, or if, like me, you genuinely don’t care what people think of you and are capable of conveying that fact in the universal langauage of distain.

So! Tomorrow I leave Flanders for Leige. Like most countries with a French-speaking minority, Belgium is a schitzophrenic country – Flanders, to the north, in flat, Flemish-speaking and steeped in history, which Wallonia to the south is culturally and economically stangant, forested and mostly French. So for the next few days I’ll be frollicing in the trees, and if all goes to plan then the next communique should be coming to you from Luxembourg.

Much love to all.

Oh! Before I forget. Firstly, Spoon are playing in Bruge on 1st October, which I may cut back for, as Spoon are awesome. Second, I found an English bookstore, which although extortionately expensive has yielded unto me The Famished Road by Ben Okri, which has simultaniously both restored and broken my sanity. Thirdly and finally, a script submitted to the BBC before I left got a no, but a very encouraging one, so I’m working hard on a few new script projects for when I get back. There you go, the email kids didn’t get this paragraph. Betcha feel special, huh?